Oh here’s John Hodgman, author of the weird and hilarious The Areas of My Expertise, who is apparently also a “minor television personality,” who knew?! And here is his very sly “roast” of the president, Barack Obama, at some event covered by C-SPAN. Worth watching just to see Obama cracking up over the hinjinx of the Birthers. Also, there are hobbit jokes. Basically, EVERY WONKETTE MEME OF 2008-2009 is in this John Hodgman routine. [C-SPAN/YouTube]

Ha ha oh jeez is it a sign of insanity when something Michele Bachmann says actually makes sense? Here’s the deal: the “unsinkable” Titanic sprung a leak and then its “three chambers” filled with water and it was TOO LATE and all the poors drowned while Kate Winslet (spoiler alert!) survived, barely. Similarly, the economy has sprung a leak and we will all die because of Barack Obama. Ya dig??? [Our Beloved C-SPAN]

You know what the White House press corps loves more than anything? Naked abuse of power and ritual humiliation. Here, Robert Gibbs has HAD IT with these motherfucking phones in this motherfucking briefing room, so he forcibly takes the mobile from this poor old guy, who was probably just twittering or getting an emergency call from a loved one, on their death bed. MORE »

A guy was caught selling guns from a potato chip stand in a market. It was as easy as catching a gun salesman at a potato chip stand, said police. [Washington Examiner] MORE »

On this very boring news day, let us rejoice that we have the fake birthday of George Washington to celebrate. Ken has already wrung two (2) posts out of this blessed shopping holiday, and (SPOILER ALERT) you may have another one coming in a few hours! So let’s take this occasion to look at an Official Ranking of American Presidents, brought to you courtesy of some elite historians in the pocket of Big C-SPAN. MORE »

Despite the best (?) efforts of PUMA and the Bigfoot Murderer, Congress counted up Nate Silver’s mysterious 538 electoral votes today and guess what? Barack Obama got a whole lot of those votes — 365 over old what’s-his-name’s 173 — and Dick Cheney says that makes Barack Obama the president of the U.S.A., hooray! Why do we feel so creeped out? [YouTube]

Here is that remarkable video from last night, just after the debate. The news channels quickly cut to their commentators and spin rooms and such, but the C-SPAN cameras stayed as long as there was a candidate in the room. Here’s what to watch for: MORE »

This is the first time your editor has really paid attention to those squiggly lines on the CNN independent voter torture graph. Wow! The uncommitted voters of Ohio do not like this John McCain character. The only time we’ve seen a real happy response to McCain was when he was talking very generally (and quite well) about America’s history as a “peacekeeper.” (Ha.) And then he had to snarl and say “this isn’t the time for on-the-job training,” and the male and female lines went down like the stock market. What does it mean? MORE »

John McCain made the brilliant decision to let his batshit crazy 95-year-old mother, Roberta, go on the teevee again — probably unmedicated — and say some more senile old lady things. For this, we applaud him. Last time we heard from the oldest lady in the world, she criticized Mitt Romney for being a Mormon, and we laughed! This time she says that no one likes her son and that she has no idea what she’s talking about. God, this woman never misses the mark! MORE »

Last night, crazy nonsense went down on the House floor, as Republicans walked out on a vote because of sour grapes after their anti-immigrant motion was shot down in a questionable way. MORE »

Now that the 109th Congress is finally over (having ended with a big, stabby bang) we are forced to confront the sad fact that we’ll never again see Make-Believe Congresswoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs on C-Span, where she has made a little home for herself over this last month, babbling at odd hours to an empty chamber on topics ranging from abortions to the first lady of Azerbaijan. MORE »